DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Digital infrastructure; what is it and how will it benefit consumers? Experts discuss digital infrastructure and transformation in our webinar held in August 2022. Watch to earn 65 minutes’ CPD.
cisi.org/ infrastructure
5. The importance of establishing new ways of working BB: Since the pandemic, there’s a realisation that technology is no longer a department that sits ‘over there’. The tech team is an integral part of the firm. It enables the organisation to serve its customers and provides differentiation in the market. Often, you hear the word ‘agile’ concerning the technology team. I think tech teams would want the organisation to realise this isn’t just about agility in working with technology. It’s about business agility.
PART 2: FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO TELL YOUR TECH TEAM
1. Where you want to be three years from now BB: Once you’re clear on where the company wants to be and who you want to serve, you can start setting a digital transformation roadmap, not just for today but for the next three years. As a developer, I perhaps didn’t appreciate the business direction. All I cared about was whether I could write the most efficient code with the least defects and help technical engineers who have only looked at tech to understand the business drivers and angles.
2. What makes you unique BB: Increasingly, it is becoming harder for firms to create unique selling points from products alone due to commoditisation. The differentiation is created in customers’ emotional experience and connection with the product and/or the firm. Businesses that approach digital transformation holistically consider the user (consumer, colleague, and partner) experience, operating model, distribution strategy, processes, technology architecture, and partnerships. They then
CISI.ORG/REVIEW
use technology to realise these human- centric experiences across channels. Digital interactions generate data and the ability to observe behaviours and create a feedback loop to learn and enhance products. Key performance indicators also change in the digital world – both for business and IT. For example, measuring number and quality of interactions over average number of products sold, customer net promotor score, and sentiment improvement over time.
meet a customer’s needs through a digital service and then measure whether that need is satisfied. Digital transformation makes it much easier for a business to provide this information, as real-time feedback and behavioural analysis tools stream data directly to the teams building the technology. In return, there is a tighter feedback loop between the tech team and the business’s customers, accelerating innovation relative to more manual processes for aggregating customer feedback.
4. What your priorities are BB: A common design language is critical in communicating prioritisation with clarity. The mechanics of achieving prioritisation may be based on a business case, feasibility, business outcomes, risk impact, alignment to strategy, and user feedback. Communication is often through daily
meetings, updating the backlogs and making decisions visible to all through prioritisation grids and collaboration tools. This clarity helps teams/squads/
You need clear communication from the management team
JLP: You need clear communication from the management team to the rest of the company about culture, strategy, and behaviours. This helps all departments to understand who the firm is and what is expected from each team. For example, if outstanding customer service and simplicity are core values, then someone sitting in the tech team will know they need to build a simple product that provides excellent customer service. Then, if a firm is unsure which direction to go in, they can refer to the values and consider how to do it more simply.
3. Who your customers are JLP: The tech team needs to know about customers’ needs in all their nuance, as they are building technology to satisfy those needs. In a sense, this is the heart of good product management. Technologists also need to understand customers’ behaviours and preferences. It allows them to effectively hypothesise how to
individuals prioritise their time. For example, developers in the team will write code to deliver a feature aligned to that prioritisation and their business counterpart will validate and test it. A perfectly formed squad often
contains business analysts, developers, and testers that are always fully aligned with priorities.
JLP: Prioritisation within a digital transformation strategy is no different from any other business decision-making process. A digital transformation provides highly scalable foundations for extracting value over many years. The calculations about return on investment are different for more traditional projects. A business should be mindful of strategically valuable, foundational work and show a tech team that it values this technical capability building alongside the day-to- day work of evolving its products.
5. What resources are available BB: It’s essential to be clear about how you’ll fund digital transformation. Is it a centralised or a decentralised budget? Consider the talent or upskilling needed, because managing emerging technologies in the cloud, for example, is very different from operating data centres. You’ll need continuous training to get people up to speed on technology transformation.
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